Cart Before The Horse

Bernadette Marie

CART BEFORE THE HORSE

Other Great Books From Bernadette Marie

The Keller Family Series

The Executive’s Decision

Now Available

A Second Chance

Winter 2012

Opposite Attraction

Summer 2012

Center Stage

Winter 2013

Look for the many books in the

Aspen Creek Series b
eginning in 2012

Bernadette

Marie

Cart Before The Horse

This is a fictional work.
The names, characters, incidents, places, and locations are solely the concepts and products of the author’s imagination or are used to create a fictitious story and should not be construed as real.

5 PRINCE PUBLISHING AND BOOKS, LLC

PO Box 16507

Denver, CO 80216

www.5PrinceBooks.com

www.BernadetteMarie.com

Cart Before the Horse

Ber
nadette Marie

Copyright Bernadette Marie 2011

Published by 5 Prince Publishing

Photo Credit: Front Cover Tatiana Makotra

Author Photo: Copyright ©2009 Damon Kappell/Studio 16

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations, reviews, and articles. For any other permission please contact 5 Prince Publishing and Books, LLC.

First Edition/First Printing October 2011 Printed U.S.A.

5 PRINCE PUBLISHING AND BOOKS, LLC.

For
Stan

First came friendship, then came love.

Then there was a hamburger and a snowstorm.

Acknowledgements

As always I would like to acknowledge my husband who believes that no star is too far for me to reach.
To my children who run to see the boxes of books that arrive at our door and anxiously await their copies, (for much later of course.) A very special thank you for my dad who makes sure we will always have enough books. Thanks! For my mom who passes along the compliments and always arranges for me to sign to a very appreciative crowd. My sister, who reads the books in beta form, races to the computer and buys the first eBook form, is handed copies out of the box, and still arrives at every signing and buys a book. Can I say I’m blessed…oh yeah.

To Susan. Again, without you I would not have enjoyed any of the lessons I have learned along the way. As always, you are the bestest! June, I am honored to have you in my life in such a capacity. My family is so much better for having you in our lives.

For Antoinette, Connie, Theresa, and Sue without your input and appreciation for my storytelling I would only be doing this to humor myself. Thank you for your love and support.

And last, but certainly not least, I dedicate this book to Kim and Speros. To the couple whose wedding cake was themed CART BEFORE THE HORSE, you are an amazing inspiration to us all. Five children and ten years of togetherness before marriage is an amazing feat. Though this book was written before I met you, it’s because of you know that the happily ever after factor of this story is plausible. Thank you for your friendship.

Dear Reader,

I have always been a play by the rules kind of person. Everything in life was to have a pattern and you followed that pattern.

If you were raised in tradition, you obeyed that tradition. If something was deemed socially backward, well then it was better to just not do it.

The adventures of Holly and Gabe in CART BEFORE THE HORSE was so refreshing for me to write. Take a situation that I would have seen as backward and accepting all its pieces was freeing for me as a person and a writer. Love doesn’t always come before marriage and the baby carriage after the k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

I hope you enjoy the beautifully backward love affair of Gabe and Holly. I sure enjoyed bringing them to the pages and accepting that backward is wonderful.

Happy reading!

Bernadette Marie

CART BEFORE THE HORSE

by

Bernadette Marie

Chapter One

Holly’s feet had gone numb and so had her legs. Another fifteen, twenty, thirty seconds she sat looking down at the stick in her hand. She’d shaken it, cursed it, and waited more than the allotted time, but it hadn’t changed. The word on the stupid EPT stick said the same thing.

PREGNANT.

“No. No. No!” She threw the stick into the sink as she tried to peel her numb legs from the toilet. She’d waited there so long, hoping, unable to look at the test, they wobbled beneath her and she struggled to pull herself upright.

Holly stumbled through her bathroom door and out to the bedroom. The box from the pregnancy test sat on the bed, taunting her. She fell onto the bed beside it. She read and reread the instructions. She’d done it right. She’d done what it said to do, and still it had boldly stated, PREGNANT.

“No!” she screamed and threw the box across the room.

She looked at the clock. It was already seven thirty. Not only had her life been upheaved, now she was falling behind. In exactly an hour and a half she had a presentation to make to a client who could bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars into the company in the next six months. Her meticulous planning and preparation for this very morning had been her focus for the past three months. Now she was nowhere near being on her A-game.

She showered, skipped a few of her usual rinse and repeats, ripped an outfit out of the closet, and grabbed for two shoes. As she buttoned her blouse for the third time, she realized her

perfectly organized life had just crashed around her.

There wasn’t time to refine the out-of-control hair for her perfect hairdo. There wasn’t time for more than lipstick, and the shade she’d chosen didn’t do anything for her pale skin. Had she left the presentation in her office or her car? Sweat beaded on her forehead. The phone rang, and she screamed. She threw down her makeup brushes, followed by a string of curses.

“Morning, Holly.” Tracy’s voice on the other end screeched in her ear.

“I am not speaking to you,” she hollered into the phone at her best friend. Ex-best friend, she decided.

“You’re in a mood.” Tracy laughed.

“You have no idea. Leave me alone. I have to get to work.”

“Slow down,” she said. “That’s what I’m calling for. The client canceled. Weather in Chicago has the flights canceled. We have a week to stew over it now.”

“Are you kidding me?” Holly moved her head from side to side to alleviate the tension that had started to pinch in her neck. Was God mad at her? Was he punishing her? What was going on in her life? She glowered at the floor and noticed her shoes didn’t match.

Holly flung herself backward on her bed, the phone still attached to her ear.

“Hol, what’s wrong?” Tracy’s voice had that irritating yet soothing quality that Holly usually adored, but today it was unwelcome.

“I’m just not feeling well.” She couldn’t have spoken more truth.

“I’m headed in. Why don’t you take your time. Take a hot bath and have some tea,” she offered, as she would. Holistic tea would fix the world, according to Tracy Morton.

Nothing would fix her now.

“Fine.”

“Are you still mad at me?” Tracy teased.

“You have no idea,” she repeated, then hung up the phone

and just lay there staring at the ceiling.

An hour later, finally taking Tracy’s advice, she made tea, drank it down, and sat chin deep in a hot bath. She held the telltale stick in her hand. Still it hadn’t changed.

PREGNANT.

“Once more, Holly. Got the cart before the horse,” she said, just as her mother always said to her.

She ducked her head into the bubbles and tried to gather her thoughts. She’d always done things backward, but not b
ecause she wasn’t organized. Her intelligence had her learning to read before she knew how to color. She graduated high school before she was old enough to drive. Likewise, she’d graduated college by the time most people her age made it out of high school. Because she was in a creative field, being young hadn’t hindered her. She flourished as a textile designer.

Tracy had taken her under her wing when she started her own textile design company. Tracy had the inheritance and the experience to make it happen. Holly brought the talent.

Before she was thirty, she had secured herself as a top designer in the field. Her best work was worn by infants and toddlers around the nation. Funny, she’d never imagined she’d own anything from one of her own collections.

She had the best wardrobe and a closet stocked with the most beautiful shoes. The
Mercedes in the parking garage had been her very first luxury before the condo in the Denver high-rise. Things, though perhaps backward, had always been good for Holly Jacobs.

But nothing was more backward than the situation she was in now. PREGNANT! The damn stick might as well have screamed it.

Perhaps it could have worked out for others. She’d been to many weddings where the bride was either pregnant or the child of the bride and groom was in the wedding. Being married wasn’t a prerequisite for parenthood anymore.

However, Holly thought to herself as a wave of nausea

rolled through her, in most cases the woman carrying the child

knew who the man was who was responsible.

It was two o’clock when Holly finally walked through the door of the office. The receptionist looked at her with wide eyes and then the heads of the sales staff began to lift their gazes from where they sat at their desks pretending to be occupied with work. Holly marched through the remodeled warehouse to her corner office. She shut the door and pulled closed the blinds that looked out into the larger office. She set her bag containing the materials for the now canceled meeting on the desk, tucked her Gucci purse into her large desk drawer,
and locked it.

She fell into her oversized leather chair and let out a breath. If the staff was surprised by the mere fact that she’d taken the morning off, which she couldn’t remember ever having done, what were they going to think when her impending doom
became obvious?

Impending doom.
Was that really what she thought about it? Yes, she decided, it was. She was an only child and an odd one at that. Her father had doted on her, but she’d never been able to pinpoint whether her mother enjoyed her company or was truly embarrassed by her oddness and over-excelling. One thing was for certain, Holly had always looked out for herself and no one else. How could she possibly think that motherhood was a good idea?

She pounded her hands against the leather. She didn’t think it was a good idea.
She wouldn’t have been in this situation if she’d been thinking at all.

The tap at the door took longer to come than she’d e
xpected. Tracy opened it slowly, steam rising from the cup of tea she carried with her.

“Feeling better?”

“I don’t think I’ll be getting better.” Holly stood and took off her Christian Dior suit coat. The swing coat had been her

last purchase, and as she pulled it from her arms she brushed off the navy blue fabric and admired it as if it were the last beautiful thing she’d ever own. God, she’d need maternity clothes now. She draped it on a hanger and then hooked that on a rack bolted to the brick outer wall of her office where samples of her work hung.

Tracy stepped through the door. “Did you go to a doctor?”

Holly closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Tracy knew her too well. “Of course.”

Tracy set the tea on the desk and sat down in the chair nearest her. “Okay, so what kind is it?”

“What kind? What kind of what?”

“Well if you have a cold, you’re here. If you have the flu, you’re here. You had appendicitis and you gave a presentation and sealed a multi-million-dollar sale before you collapsed and were rushed to the hospital. So…” She folded her hands on her lap. “I assume this is some disease that’s kicking your ass. Do you have cancer?”

Tracy’s solemn tone had Holly bursting into laughter. It felt good to laugh. It eased things for just a moment.

Holly smiled for the first time all day and looked down at her best friend. Her long, flowing cotton skirt was a blue dyed design that Holly was sure she’d created in her own bathtub. The gold belt added the right amount of glamour to the outfit. Her long, mousy hair fell in natural curls well past the middle of her back, and no matter how hard Holly tried, she couldn’t convince her to color it. Tracy was forty-five, but her skin had been drenched in so many herbal creams she didn’t look much more than Holly’s thirty.

A crease formed between Tracy’s brows. “I assume you’re dying—and you’re laughing.”

“Oh, damn it, let me laugh. I’m still pissed off at you.”

“Okay.” Tracy wiggled in her seat. “Why?”

“You and your damn you’re-going-to-be-old-too-young
crap.” Holly picked up the tea that Tracy had brought to her

and sipped. She swallowed hard, trying to clean her
mouth from the residue that always seemed to linger with
Tracy’s brews.

“Does this still have to do with your birthday?” Her friend stood. She shook her head, which made her dangling earrings sound like wind chimes “You needed to loosen up. You had a great time. There was a part of you I’ve never seen. I’m not sure
you
’d ever seen the Holly that came to that party.” She smiled. “It was refreshing.”

“Yeah.” She sipped the tea again. Tracy was right. Holly had never seen herself like that either. “I don’t drink.”

“You did.”

“I don’t dance.”

“You’re great at it.”

“I don’t cozy up to strange men I don’t know.”

“Oh, but it’s fun, isn’t it?” Tracy laughed. “It’s been two months. You can’t still be hungover, and I’m sure after this long you’ve gotten over one night of being human.”

“Let’s just say that night changed my life.” Holly reached for her smock to cover her Dior suit. She opened the drawer of her drawing table and pulled out the designs she’d left there the day before.

Tracy followed her. “I don’t read good things into that statement.”

Holly just shook her head as she reached for the pen she needed for shading. “Let’s start with a few items. You’re my only friend.”

“Yes, but I’ve tried to remedy that.”

“I know. So who were the people you invited to my birt
hday party?”

Tracy blew out a breath. “Well, the Conners, Dickensons, and Martinezes. Then there was Alan, Reese, Oliver and E
ileen, Tara and Sandy.”

“I know all of them. Someone brought a friend.”

“I think Tara brought a few of them.”

“Who were they?”

“Oh, hell, Holly. I don’t know. That’s the point of a party.

Having fun and meeting new people.”

Holly nodded. “Well.” She put down the pen and turned on the stool toward her dearest friend. “That conservative Ho
lly that we know and love lost a bit of control that night.”

“Too many mojitos.” Tracy’s nod and a little dance with her shoulders sent her earrings chiming again.

“As is the case. Point being, I think I ended up in a corner with one of those friends of a friend of Tara’s.”

“You looked like some high schooler in a lip lock.” Tracy roared in laughter. “I’ve never been more proud of you.”

“Wonderful.” She walked across the office to a small refrigerator in the corner and took out a bottle of water. She opened it, took one sip, and instantly felt nauseated.

“Didn’t you get his number?”

“No, I don’t really remember him at all.” But she had gotten
something
from him she’d never forget.

“You know, if we asked Tara, I’m sure we’d figure out who he was.”

“Two months, Tracy. It was two months ago.”

“Yes, but if he’s still on your mind, it would be worth loo
king into.” Tracy gave her a nudge and a smile.

“Yes. I think I’d better find him. It would be nice to know who he is.”

“Broke your heart, didn’t he?”

“Tracy, my heart is fine. But it would probably be a good thing to meet the father of my child before the baby is born.”

Tracy took the bottle of water from Holly’s hand, drank it down, and then sat right on the floor, her flowing skirt piled around her.

Holly gave a snort. “Yeah, that was my reaction too. Well, actually I think I did some yelling.”

“Holly…”

“I know. Cart before the horse again.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m thirty years old. I guess I’m about to become a
mother.” Finally hearing herself say it made the churning in her stomach worsen, and she ran out of the office and down the hall to the bathroom, where she proceeded to throw up the banana she’d managed to get down for breakfast.